Ember (The Dragao 1)

1

Emma

I felt like I was being watched. Then again, I’d been having this feeling for the last week, this prickling sensation on the back of my neck, this sense I wasn’t truly alone despite being surrounded by the others in my village. There were a dozen others working tirelessly to try to salvage what we could of the crops, and although this year would cause us to ration what we’d grown and harvested, I was still thankful for what we had.

I straightened, wiped the perspiration from my brow with the back of my hand, and wished I had one of the sickles to lean against. As it was, I was on handpicking duty today, my basket slung over my shoulder and hanging across my chest. I had a small utility belt that held my shears and a knife. I looked down at the hand that held the tools when I worked, calluses marring my palm, blisters popping up.

I lifted a hand to block out the scorching glow from the dual suns beating down on me. I felt grimy with the thick layer of dirt and sweat covering my body, and was thankful I’d saved up my tokens so I could use the communal bathing chamber. It wasn’t just to get clean, but to help ease my aching and sore muscles from the hard labor too.

The prickling sensation came over me again, and I glanced around the fields. Everyone was busy working to gather what we could before the first Scorch of the season—that time every year where the twin suns were so brutal for humans that we were forced to stay in the underground dwelling we called the Pit. Because the temperature was so high during the Scorch Season, we’d get instant second- and third-degree burns just from a moment's exposure.

And it was the Scorch that rendered the crops and fields burnt and dead in just a day’s time, which was why everyone was working so hard to gather what we could before we went down below and stayed there until the Scorch passed.

I glanced over at the massive black and red–tinged mountains that surrounded our village. I’d never known anything but this world, same as my mother, my mother’s mother, and so on. For centuries upon centuries, humans had lived in the world of Alev, a dry and hot world that was inhospitable to my kind as much as hell was.

We’d adapted to survive here, but we all knew this wasn’t our real home. This wasn’t where we’d originated. How could it be, when our bodies weren't made for this world? And so as a young girl, I’d listened to the elders speak about how we came to be in this bleak realm, how our ancestors came from another place, still in this world… just somewhere else, someplace we could never get to.

I imagined this world could have been one and the same to that biblical place, one where fire and heat, truth and despair reigned true. I felt like that about Alev most days, but only because the struggle was so hard. Only because I was constantly tired and hated continuously worrying about when my next meal would be, or if one of the men in my village would finally make their threats to me a reality.

I stared at those mountains, so beautiful in their own monstrous way, and couldn’t help but picture the Dragao living within them. Another shiver claimed me. As I thought of those humanlike men, the feeling of being watched intensified.

I’d never seen an actual Dragao, but the stories I’d heard, the accounts from the elders who had, were enough to make me feel like I’d experienced their presence firsthand.

Triple the height and weight of a human man.

Fangs.

Claws.

Vicious and dangerous.

Territorial.

Completely and utterly barbaric and primordial.

We were taught to forever fear these males, that they wouldn’t hesitate to tear us limb from limb at first glance. Although no one ever questioned the Dragaos’ viciousness, we all assumed these facts had been passed down from elder to elder. We assumed there was truth in these words.

But for all the fear the elders put in us about the Dragao, we never saw them. For how territorial and dangerous they were, they stayed in their mountain dwellings and let us live in peace. So I always wondered how dangerous they could be if they never attacked us.

I always wondered, Do they even exist if we never see them?

I tore my gaze from those bloodred and obsidian mountains and let my gaze scan over the acres of land that stretched out for as far as I could see. This year’s crops were horrendous, with the Scorch coming on full force. The red-hued soil was darkening, seeming more and more like blood as the days passed. Once the Scorch hit the ground, it would darken so much it would be almost black.